Ischell inside box intermittent POP!!! noise

Lango-Django

Has anybody else ever had this problem: intermittent loud POP noise for no apparent reason?

So far it's only ever happened when the guitar is resting on its stand and I'm playing my banjo.

I love the sound of the pickup, but this is a pain...

Will

Matt Mitchell

it's jealous of your banjos volume...?

Jim Kaznosky

Never happened to me. The batteries are fresh? Your cables are in good shape?

Lango-Django

Thanks, Jim, yes the battery is fresh and the cables seem ok...

Possible problem is that I have a lot of connections, thus lots of places for bad stuff to happen...

Ischell output to cord (1) to little aluminum pre-amp box (2) to foot pedal (3) to amp (4).

Four connections in all... yikes!

But I need that foot pedal to turn off the volume when I'm not playing the guitar, and to get some extra volume when playing lead...

Jim Kaznosky

Got it. I've been down this road before with pedals. The best place to begin is to try to eliminate one source at a time and see if you are still having the issue.

Lango-Django

File this under "Duh!" but after owning the Ischell pickup for over a year, I finally figured out something that should've been obvious...

The best place to put that little aluminum pre-amp box is sitting right on top of the amp's input jack... away from me, away from the guitar, and away from the floor.

How did I not think of this sooner?

Anyway, I've tried it at home and it seems to work perfectly, so now to take it out on a gig...

Bob Holo

So are you saying the Ischell doesn't have a virtual ground or that something that you were doing was causing some part of your system to be capacitive and periodically drain voltage when a certain arc potential was released. If moving your box location helped, it might be cable capacitance/insulation/connections? Placing pieces of equipment in certain places is one way to do it, but might get inconvenient if your gig venue causes you to set up with odd cable runs. Clean your connections with WD40 or Caig and if that doesn't work, you might have to invest in a really nice set of low capacitance well insulated cables and then do that whole "no-twist" looping wind up technique to keep them in as good a condition as possible. But really, live performance amplification can be tricky, and "Sh* happens" sometimes no matter how well you're prepared. There was a bit of cable-pop at DFNW this year with some of the larger acts where lots of long overlapping cable runs were involved. Or at least I'm guessing it was cable-pop because the sound guy hopped up on stage a few times and it looked like all he was doing was draping cables over things to get them up off the ground. I'm no expert on it, but cables can get capacitive for any one of several reasons and give you that same 'pop' that you get from switching between old dirty poorly-grounded pickups & etc.

If, however, the sound was really loud - it's probably a more severe problem and you want to test your equipment & mains grounds - particularly if you run tube amps. You can hurt yourself on a tube amp with a faulty ground... if in doubt, only handle it with one hand - keep the other in your pocket. If a tube amp discharges into both of your hands across your chest it can fibrillate you right out of the world of the living...

Lango-Django

Thanks for your thoughts, Bob.

I'm pretty careful about my cables, and I'm guessing that the issue was probably overlapping cables, as you have described.

I never knew about that before. Thanks!